BioMed Central and SpringerOpen sign the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment - BioMed Central blog

"The IF cannot tell you how likely it is that your article will be downloaded by your peers, shared on social, or read by policymakers. It tells your boss very little about your publication history (as the H index might.) It doesn’t even tell you how many of the articles cited in the journal might have been retracted. This is why we include Altmetrics on every article page.

But we want to go further. And that’s why we’re signing the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA.)

For those of you who haven’t heard of DORA, it recognises 'a pressing need to improve the ways in which the output of scientific research is evaluated by funding agencies, academic institutions, and other parties.' Signing it means that we pledge to 'greatly reduce emphasis on the journal Impact Factor as a promotional tool by presenting the metric in the context of a variety of journal-based metrics. Hundreds of other organisations, including institutions and publishers, have already signed DORA, so we will be among good company.

We have chosen not to cease promoting the IF entirely. We will not remove IFs from our journal websites. Our authors tell us time and time again that they need to know IFs, and we believe and trust in author choice (after all, our authors represent some of the world’s best and brightest minds.)

Nor will we be compliant immediately. It will take time to audit every one of our 300 or so journals, and our website is undergoing some changes right now, so we’ll update as we go.

But we promise that by the end of 2017, the way we describe our journals will become less reliant on the Impact Factor and will show more alternative metrics, and data, which scientists can use to make their own informed choice regarding where to publish."